Sunday, August 31, 2008

Enough pissing match with Skeptico for me.

This answer to Skeptico is being held for review by him. So in the mean time...

The discussion with Skeptico is getting tedious, so I'm not going to answer everything (we know how that would lead to exponential growth) but instead will pick the low-hanging fruit.

Like many pompous people, Skeptico seems to think his reasoning is logical, and other people's fails to be logical because he sees them as rife with fallacies of logic. That's simply a delusion: we ALL engage in defeasible reasoning except in a very few excruciatingly precise circumstances where we start out with agreed upon precise meanings of terms, assumptions, and premises and apply only logical operators. In short, it doesn't happen much outside of mathematics. We see lots of examples of this delusion in Skeptico's latest response: I'd love to see him identify ONE example of where he uses a logical argument with unquestionable assumptions, definitions, and 100% true premises. He says, for example, "...not one shred of evidence in there that you are right and I am wrong about anything..." What perfection! I couldn't make up better examples. But of course, he can only make that dishonest claim because he is referring to the introduction, not the evidence that follows. The term for that is "quote mining" or "taken out of context".

Skeptico describes my introduction as "poisoning the well". Would Skeptico ever commit such a heinous crime? Well, let's see: a quick google search for "woo" turned up 454 hits at his blog. But is it really poisoning the well? I'd say it is an abstract presenting a model, and the remainder of my post was evidence supporting the model I presented. Thank goodness we have folks like Skeptico to show us that science journals worldwide have been utilizing such fallacies of argument!

"In fact, I don't think I've ever mentioned low food prices before, although I could be wrong." Well shucks, perhaps you should learn to search your own postings, or perhaps maybe even remember what you said."If GM actually did produce low food prices, most people would view this as a good thing."But here is only one of many uses of weasle words by Skeptico: he pre-excuses himself when it is convenient to write something and he doesn't care if it is a lie.

"Here's the thing Mike. You are on the Internet, using what may be your real name or what may be an alias, conversing with others who may or may not be using aliases. You don't know who they are even if they tell you. We don't know who you are even if you tell us."Ooo, don't the Hare Krishna's use something like this? Non Krishnas are demons and will lie, so we don't need to pay attention to their arguments? Or are you taking pyrrhonism to ridiculous lengths, denying the possibility of knowledge of my identity and qualifications? It so happens that if you do a little bit of homework, my identity and knowledge can be confirmed. And you don't even need the net (though you can): I am pictured on the front page of the Boston Globe newspaper today. Is that main stream media good enough for you? My resume, picture, and lots of other information are at my web sites, and have been for many years. If you're still worried about my identity, I can provide references. Twit.

"The evidence matters."Yes, evidence does matter: but so does the framework of understanding which is necessary to judge it. You, and most of the readers here, don't have that understanding, any more than you have the necessary understanding of any number of other technical fields. Your conspicuous errors repeatedly show that you know little of the field. (Ugh, a pun.)

You have stated no qualifications in the subject of agricultural economics. I, on the other hand, have been following it for the past 35 years since I was a freshman at Cornell. That's why you bungled the difference between yield per acre and productivity.

"Now remember, I started my reply with 'I think you're saying...' - which any rational and mentally stable individual would have taken as a person's honest attempt to understand your point."Ah, general purpose weasle words once again. Now, does that translate into "I declare that you are saying" or "It's possible that you are saying"? Or someplace in between? If you had wanted to convince anybody that you were making a decent attempt (rather than spewing the first foolish thing that came to your prejudiced mind), you would have considered more than one possible meaning and justified why you chose that one. Before you invented a litany of reasons why your misinterpretation meant that I was wrong.

"Reading your posts again I realize you don't show anger, and that I was perhaps projecting my own anger at your style of debating[...] I apologize for calling what you wrote "angry drivel". I was wrong saying that. I should have called it unnecessarily confrontational, aggressive, loud mouthed, smug arrogance."So let's see. Skeptico is confessing to my accusations of his projection and anger. But not because he's an honest guy or anything, but because it's so damned obvious that even he can see it now. Is it clever sarcasm now to channel that same stupid anger into a backhanded compliment? And to use emotive weasle words like those? We've seen how those work: men are confident, women are smug. Sounds like more projection to me.

Skeptico (and others) quoted my statement: "I get paid to teach (at an elite public high school)". He wrote:"LMAO. Oh you don't think you're infallible, noooo. You need to write to express not to impress[....]"Ah, a perfect example of that old creationist favorite, quote mining. In context, I wrote that sentence as part of an explanation of why I would not waste my time answering demands for explanation from every Tom, Dick, and Harry. Not as a statement of authority in agricultural economics.

"An honest mistake, especially if expressed with some doubt (as I did), is not a straw man."Wow, since when did you get to rewrite the rules of logic to grant yourself exceptions when you've used weasle words? And we're to believe you're honest when you've already confessed to being angry and projecting? Lots of creationists think they're honest when they misinterpret evolution: will you exempt them too? Or do they always forget to use the mystical weasle words?

"And Commodity prices drop due to technological improvements such as GM? Source please. And not just a graph of prices going down. A source that shows prices are going down due to technological improvements. Correlation is not causation. Source please."If you want sources for basic knowledge in a field, you're rather ignorant. But here you go: Agricultural productivity at wikipedia. "Changes in TFP are usually attributed to technological improvements[...] As farms become more productive, the wages earned by those who work in agriculture increase. At the same time, food prices decrease and food supplies become more stable." The wikipedia Green Revolution article has a similar statement, though it is unsourced.

"“claque”? If you really meant “an organized body of professional applauders” (as Wikipedia defines it), this is just absurd."Ah weasle words again: "If you really meant". However, if Skeptico had the competence to use a real dictionary, it would be obvious that I meant another, more common, and modern usage: a group of fawning admirers. It amazes me when people seem to go out of their way to reinterpret plain statements by selecting blatantly inappropriate definitions.

“why would farmers continue to pay for GM seeds if doing so reduced their overall profits and/or increases their debt? If GM makes them more competitive then they must be better off (ie not reduced profits) even after the cost of the GM seeds.”Still whining, because you haven't enough understanding of the field to create a simple hypothetical example? I'll take pity on you and give you one.

Assume two farmers, A and B, both of whom have identical farms and grow identical traditional crops. Both net $50K/year.

Farmer B switches to GM seed, which gives him a lower cost of production (we'll assume that he produces the same yield, though that's not necessary.) The lower cost of production comes from less use of fuel that offsets the higher cost of seed. Now, A makes $50K, and B makes (lets say) $70K. Oooo, looks like GM is a good thing and doesn't hurt farmer A!

But wait! Farmer B has shown that this land can be more profitable. That means that the value of the land goes up, which means that the rent or taxes or both go up. No matter how little they go up, farmer A is worse off. The GM seed company observes the profitability, and as a monopoly, raises its price to consume that new profit. Indeed, the seed company can raise the price until farmer B makes as little as farmer A, because B's alternative is to do the same as A and make as little. Now both farmers are worse off. But because of the stickyness of land prices and long terms of loans, mortgages, and property tax rates, the lower earnings can stick.

It gets worse. Because there seems to be new profitability due to GM, more farmers plant more acres to GM and the supply increases. Pushing down the price of the crop, and reducing profitability still further for A and B.

All of these changes are more or less independent from each other, and not coordinated by government or markets.

In addition, there can be a prisoner's dilemma sort of race among farmers to be the first adopters of newly profitable technologies. The payoff if all adopt can be much lower than the payoff if all refrain. But because the payoff for a defector who adopts alone is highest, and the payoff for the sucker is lowest of all, there's no end to the defection.

Now this is a hypothetical example that answers Skeptico's questions. Very similar issues are the bread and butter of agricultural economics. The basic facts of US agriculture are very difficult to explain without such models: the enormous reduction of family farms, the enormous reduction of profitability of farms for families, the rapidity of adoption of technological change, and the increasing corporate ownership of farms. I'd also note that I assumed the GM changes didn't increase yield, but many have. Increased production can have nonlinear effects on prices and thus profits.

I don't expect you folks to believe this: doubtless some of you will be stupid enough to trot out equilibristic economics arguments for a subject that is famously not so. But once you've got as complicated a system as this one, simplistic ahistorical arguments like Skeptico's just aren't convincing.

5 comments:

Indeed, the seed company can raise the price until farmer B makes as little as farmer A, because B's alternative is to do the same as A and make as little. Now both farmers are worse off.

Nope. If the seed company manages to raise the price exactly enough to capture B's entire consumer surplus - that is, by $20k/year - then B nets the same as A: $50k/year. In which case the value of the land does not increase as potential land buyers are indifferent between earning $50k/year (while spending a lot on fertilizer and/or pesticides) and earning $50k/year (while spending a lot on seed). Also in that scenario there are no extra profits to draw in more farmers whose output would drive down the value of the crop. In short, given that premise neither A nor B are worse off for the existence of the GM crop.

For the rest of your argument to work B really does need to keep at least some of his consumer surplus. So let us stipulate: B has a surplus due to the new tech; part of his surplus gets captured by others (tractor salesmen, taxmen, bankers, seed salesmen); part of what remains after that gets competed away due to price competition with other farmers driving down the value of the crop. At the end of it all on net Farmer B is still somewhat better off than before.

But Farmer A might not now be better off unless he's willing to sell the farm. Assuming A owns his own farm, his property taxes will go up because of B's higher productivity. To the extent that the GM crop is a substitute for whatever he's growing he'll also be hurt by the price drop. His best bet is to sell the farm (at the new higher price!) to someone who'll probably use it to raise more GM crops.

This argument of course "proves too much" in that you could use it to decry the introduction of any new farming technology. It's not GM-specific. But it is a valid response to Skeptico's original question. One he might even be inclined to accept if you could somehow find a way to avoid calling him an idiot in the process.

but so does the framework of understanding which is necessary to judge it

Isn't this the bottom-line? That people who don't know of what they speak, but feel their "principles" give them all the answers, feel compelled to write/comment on things outside their ability to competently understand? I think this one is a weakness of the at-least-above-average-intelligence group. They think they can know EVERYTHING with just a few principles, and little or no work. Certainly both conservatism and libertarianism play on that (When I was in Washington, I was specifically taught to never trust "experts", in part because readers want to believe that libertarian principles can explain everything, and some people want to claim otherwise) but it's a tendency of a lot of people. And one which shouldn't be allowed to stand. It gets in the way of too many important things. There ARE a lot of things in life you can NOT understand just with a handful of principles. And, yes, I'd count both politics and economics among them. You need a LOT of study, tons of real world data, and time to absorb and comprehend it. Doesn't matter how smart you are, in order to understand a lot of subjects, it takes more work than reading an article or two, a book or two. That's almost the entire purpose of universities...That said, it's not like it matters. People will continue on and on about things they don't get.

Great job on the arguments with Skeptico, Mike. Libertarian "skeptics" (ie, faux skeptics) are also a pet peeve of mine, but I don't have as much patience with them as you do. I'm a natural skeptic (and PhD scientist), but I've been dismayed by how libertarianism has infected the skeptical movement. Penn & Teller's show and Brian Dunning's Skeptoid podcast are the worst offenders. Keep up the good work. --LFP

The big mistake I made with Skeptico and his claque was that I didn't point out how EVERY argument they made was defeasible. (defeatable) Even the "logical" arguments. Even the identification of informal fallacies of logic is logically fallacious as a way of disproving an argument: it only shows that an argument doesn't FORCE a particular conclusion, not that an argument is making an incorrect conclusion.

Libertarians are pre-adapted to the skeptical movement the same way they are pre-adapted to the tax protesters movement and many other fringe movements. They're ready to adopt ideologies contrary to popular sentiment. Often out of wishful thinking that they will gain some advantage or benefit.

The skeptical movement needs to continually face its own denialist tendencies. Folks like Skeptico, when faced with their own weak arguments, tend to lurch alarmingly into denialist territory and tactics.